The Simargl’s look-at-the-door, look-at-me gestures grew more frantic. Something had him agitated. I didn’t know what it was, but it obviously involved the other side of the door.

I got up, then instantly grabbed my head because it felt like it was about to explode. I only managed not to throw up because the thought of how much that would hurt scared me pukeless. Worse, the sun was up. All that light streaming through the windows made me recoil as if the rays posed a real danger, like all the old vampire myths claimed. By the gods, had the sun always been that horribly, hideously bright?

A knock on the door felt like it boomed through to the back of my skull. “Room service,” a male voice called out.

Had Ian ordered breakfast? If so, then sensing the hotel attendant must be what had rattled the Simargl. He didn’t like strangers, judging by how he cringed away from the door.

“Coming,” I mumbled, deciding I could use a sip from the attendant’s neck, anyway. Maybe some fresh, clean blood would help with the relentless pounding in my head. I was almost at the door when the Simargl threw his paws around my leg and used all his strength to try and stop me.

“What?” I began, then looked at the door with new understanding. I didn’t sense anything threatening on the other side, but everything the Simargl was doing warned Danger!

“Be right there,” I called out, changing tactics as I gestured for the Simargl to hide under the bed. Once he did, I started looking for my weapons. “Just have to get my robe—”

The door burst off its hinges and nearly hit me as it flew across the room. Then a grinning attendant pushed a meal cart into the bedroom. Before he’d finished crossing the threshold, vampires started to come out from beneath it, so that the small cart reminded me of the clown car back at the Polish whorehouse.

They weren’t just vampires, I realized when my defensive spell bounced off the first ones it hit. They were also trueborn witches, aka demon-kin, and that made them very dangerous. My freezing spell wouldn’t work on them. Neither would most of my magic, and I was hardly up to fighting form when it came to conjuring something more powerful. That’s why I threw myself at them and began to brawl the old-fashioned way.

The other bedroom door burst open. Ian, clad in only a pair of black jeans, joined the fray. After a few moments of catching his movements out of the corner of my eye, I realized he must have been holding back in our first fight. He’d been formidable but not unbeatable then. Now, he looked like a grim reaper with terrible anger-management issues. Soon, I was only getting the stragglers because Ian tore into the brunt of the attackers with such effective, gleeful viciousness; it left body parts flying and much of the hotel room demolished.

“Love a good slaughter in the morning!” he shouted before his next aerial assault drove five of them through the wall and into the next hotel room. It left me facing four, and I managed to take care of two of them before the bed flipped over, revealing the cringing, whimpering Simargl.

“There you are!” the ivory-skinned, Nordic-looking vampire exclaimed. “Boss’s tracking spell on your blood wasn’t wrong after all.”

I dove in front of him, snatching up the Simargl and holding him between my back and the window.

“Come closer and I’ll carve out your heart,” I warned, holding my very bloody silver knife in front of me for emphasis.

Nordic vamp and his swarthier, brunet buddy exchanged a glance before they looked at the food cart behind them. It was vibrating and magic tasted heavy in the air around it. That meant it probably contained a portal. How else could a dozen or so vampire-witches use it to get in this room?

“Why don’t you stop fighting?” Nordic vamp suddenly said. “All we want is the source. Give it to us, and we’ll let you live.”

His inky-haired companion grunted. “That’s not what the boss ordered.”

The blond gave him a look that said, I’m lying, stupid! Then he smiled at me as if I hadn’t noticed the subtext. “Come on, you don’t want to die for a furry-winged version of heroin, do you? And believe me, your other friend is coming with us one way or the other. I’ve seen his picture on the demon boards. He’s got a bounty on his head that’d make leveling this hotel worth it to get him.”

I gave a quick, calculated look around, wincing when I heard more walls break in the next room. Ian and I could probably win this fight, but at the cost of how many innocent lives? We couldn’t let this brawl spill out to the rest of the hotel floor. Dagon had put a bounty out on Ian. These mercenaries wouldn’t worry over collateral human damage to collect it.

The wall nearest me suddenly burst open and Ian tumbled into the room. He had two vampires by the neck when a vicious twist narrowed that number down to one. Then, in an impressively athletic move, he punted the head he’d twisted off while simultaneously breaking the back of the vampire in his arms.

“Goooooooal!” he cried out when that head sailed right between the two vampires opposite me. Then he ripped the arms off the vampire he still held and began stabbing him with the rapidly withering limbs.

Some people were cold and ruthless fighters. Others were reckless yet talented. Ian combined all those traits with a joy that made watching him feel like taking in a blood-soaked ballet. “I could watch you fight all day long,” I said with complete sincerity, but more vampires were starting to come out from the food cart. I was right; the damned thing was a portal.

This had to end before anyone got hurt who didn’t deserve to. I had never wanted to do this next thing in front of Ian, especially with an additional audience, but I had to. If I didn’t, I’d be just like these mercenaries—fine with sacrificing the lives of innocent people to suit my own purposes. I set the Simargl down and used my knife to slice open my hand, running it over the Simargl’s gray head. Then I sliced it again and ran my blood over Ian’s arm.

“Stop fighting them,” I told Ian as more vampires came from the portal in the food cart. “Go with them instead. Remember what I told you last night because I will see you again soon.”

Then I stabbed the silver blade into my heart and twisted it.

“No!” I heard Ian scream before agony stole his voice away. I felt Ian clutching me, then the new, horrible pain of fire erupting all over me. Ian let me go when the fire intensified, which was a good thing, because I exploded.

I didn’t feel anything after that.

Chapter 23

Dying is terrifying the first dozen or so times you do it. It flat out takes a while to get used to being a disembodied form flying toward the cusp of eternity. And don’t get me started on how horrifying it is when you first see the Warden of the Gateway to the Netherworld. Let’s just say it’s a good thing you no longer have bowels or you’d empty them all over yourself.

But hundreds—more?—of times later, I only felt a mild sense of trepidation as I zoomed toward the river that separated this world from the next. Of course, there wasn’t really a river; that was a construct of my own mind. So was the image I first saw of the figure that stood at its bank. The image changed according to individual beliefs. If I worshipped ancient Egyptian gods like Mencheres did, I’d see Aken the Ferryman. Right now, I saw the first god I’d ever worshipped—and shuddered.

Then that image dissolved into the reality of a tall man with bronze skin; silver hair streaked with gold and blue; and eyes that flashed so brightly with silver, I couldn’t see their actual color. When he saw me, he gave the barest shake of his head, as if disappointed that I’d died again. But before I was launched back to the land of the living, I said, “Wait!”